Jeff Davis | |
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| United States Senator fromArkansas | |
| In office March 4, 1907 – January 3, 1913 | |
| Preceded by | James H. Berry |
| Succeeded by | John N. Heiskell |
| 20th Governor of Arkansas | |
| In office January 8, 1901 – January 8, 1907 | |
| Preceded by | Daniel W. Jones |
| Succeeded by | John Sebastian Little |
| 21st Arkansas Attorney General | |
| In office 1899–1901 | |
| Governor | Daniel W. Jones |
| Preceded by | E. B. Kinsworthy |
| Succeeded by | George W. Murphy |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Jefferson Davis May 6, 1862 Rocky Comfort, Arkansas, C.S. |
| Died | January 3, 1913(1913-01-03) (aged 50) Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S. |
| Resting place | Mount Holly Cemetery, Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S. 34°44′15.3″N92°16′42.5″W / 34.737583°N 92.278472°W /34.737583; -92.278472 |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Ina MacKenzie (1882–1910) Leila Carter (1911–1913) |
| Education | University of Arkansas Vanderbilt University Cumberland University (J.D.) |
| Profession | Lawyer |
Jeff Davis (bornJefferson Davis; May 6, 1862 – January 3, 1913) was an AmericanDemocratic politician who served as the 20thgovernor of Arkansas from 1901 to 1907 and in theU.S. Senate from 1907 to 1913. He took office as one of Arkansas's firstNew South governors and proved to be one of the state's most polarizing figures. Davis used his silver tongue and aptitude fordemagoguery to exploit existing feelings of agrarian frustration among poor white farmers and thus built a largepopulist appeal.[1] However, since Davis often blamed city-dwellers, blacks, andYankees for problems on the farm,[2] the state was quickly and ardently split into "pro-Davis" and "anti-Davis" factions.
Davis began his political career asArkansas Attorney General, where he immediately began making political waves. His office challenged the legality of the Kimball State House Act and made an extremely-controversial extraterritorial interpretation of the Rector Antitrust Act. His fight to prevent trusts from doing business in Arkansas and the extreme lengths that he went to enforce his opinion would be a common theme throughout his political career. He gained credibility among the poor white farmers, who would become his base.
Davis's three two-year terms as governor "produced more politics than government,"[3] but he gained construction of a new state house and reformed the penal system. An almost-constant series of scandals and outrageous behavior characterized his time in office, which followed him when he won election to the Senate in 1906. Davis is often classified with such populist politicians asBenjamin Tillman,Robert Love Taylor,Thomas E. Watson,James K. Vardaman,Coleman Livingston Blease, and thenHuey Long, controversial figures who were Southern demagogues, populists, andpolitical bosses.
Davis was born nearRocky Comfort inLittle River County in southwestern Arkansas. His parents were Lewis W. Davis, a Baptist preacher originally fromKentucky, and his wife Elizabeth Phillips, originally fromTuscaloosa, Alabama.[4] Lewis Davis did not join the Confederate army until drafted in 1864. He named his only son afterJefferson Davis, then-President of the Confederate States of America. His military service was largely performed as a chaplain's commission, but he quit the ministry following the war and became a lawyer.[5]
No Civil War battles were fought within Sevier County's bounds, but there were many opportunities for the war to make an impression on the young Jeff Davis. After the Union captured Little Rock in 1863, the state capitol was moved toWashington. Union GeneralNathaniel Banks later led theRed River Campaign through the county, an unsuccessful attempt to captureShreveport, Louisiana via southwest Arkansas. Beginning in 1865, Laynesport, not far from the Davis property, was fortified as a Confederate garrison. Perhaps equally indelible was the romanticism of "The Lost Cause" myth in the years following the war; as a majority of southwestern Arkansas residents remained staunch Confederate supporters.[6]
Following the war, Lewis Davis was elected to serve as county and probate judge of Sevier County, and later Little River County following its creation by the state legislature in 1867. The following year, Congressional orRadical Reconstruction swept Davis and most other Democrats from office by temporarily banning former Confederates from office and passing amendments to enfranchisefreedmen. Confederate supporters did not accept this political overhaul, turning to vigilante groups such as theKu Klux Klan andKnights of the White Camelia to intimidate blacks and Republicans. The rough and tumble nature of Little River County was especially conductive for gangs, outlaws and violence.[5]
Eventually the situation devolved to such lawlessness that governorPowell Clayton declaredmartial law in Little River and nine other counties to restore order. DesperadoCullen Baker initially assembled a posse to oppose Clayton's militia, but after several skirmishes, the militia gained control of the county. Local history tells of rape, torture, murder and pillaging of blacks and white Republican sympathizers by the militia in the ensuing months. The martial law months were later described by Jeff Davis as the "most bitter episode of his youth".[5] In 1869 the Davis family moved toDover, Arkansas in theArkansas River Valley.
Following a move to Pope County, Lewis Davis found that his previous service as judge quickly elevated him within a very small legal community. However, the Davis family had moved into a post-war situation that was similarly violent to that of Little River County and rooted deep in Pope County's past. With the population divided sharply into city-country and Union-Rebel factions, both sides held grudges long after the war was over. The Republican domination of local government resulted in resentment by the ex-Confederate Democrats, and the situation exploded in 1872. In what was later known as thePope County Militia War, the county experienced a period of political and civil troubles while an unofficial militia headed by four radical Republican aligned county officials ran roughshod over the county. By its end, three of the four had been killed.[7] Pope County Democrats became heroes across the state for openly providing armed resistance to Powell Clayton's state militia. Such Reconstruction violence continued to have a strong effect on ten-year-old Jeff Davis.[5]
Davis attended public schools inRussellville, Arkansas.[7] After being rejected byWest Point in 1878, Davis enrolled at theUniversity of Arkansas inFayetteville, where he studied until 1880. He transferred toVanderbilt University inNashville,Tennessee. Although he completed the two-year law curriculum in one year, theVanderbilt University Law School withheld his diploma for failure to satisfy their residency requirement.[7]
With the help of his father's influence, Davis returned to Russellville in the summer of 1881 and was accepted to theArkansas Bar Association despite being underaged. In the fall of 1881, Davis enrolled atCumberland University, which granted hislaw degree in May 1882.
Now twenty years old, Davis joined his father's law firm, L.W. Davis and Son, Attorneys, in Russellville as a junior law partner. Focusing on homestead cases, the law practice had become rather successful. The elder Davis, buoyed by a growing law practice while also working as a newspaper editor, real estate broker, and local booster, had become one of the county's most successful citizens.[7] The elder Davis won election to theArkansas General Assembly in 1877. Jeff Davis became deeply involved in political campaigns as early as 1884.
After supportingGrover Cleveland in the1888 presidential election, Davis decided to run for district prosecuting attorney in the Fifth Judicial District the following cycle.[8]
At the time, the South was ruled by an unofficialone-party system, with Democratic hegemony,white supremacy, andblack disfranchisement remaining intertwined after Reconstruction and well into the 20th century.[9] Prominent landowning white men of the former planter class were returned to power by Democratic supporters and known as Redeemers in the waning years of Reconstruction. After 1877, they largely ruled statewide and national positions as well as an increasing number of local positions once the state passed disenfranchisement of blacks. They sought to reverse Republican gains made duringReconstruction and to return to white supremacy of theAntebellum South by disenfranchising most blacks and imposingJim Crow laws. An insurgentparamilitary component, including groups such as theKu Klux Klan, also rose to prominence during the period. Together with common whites, they committed countlesslynchings and other acts of violence against Republicans, blacks, and other groups.
Davis is often classified with politicians such asBenjamin Tillman,Robert Love Taylor,Thomas E. Watson,James K. Vardaman,Coleman Livingston Blease, and laterHuey Long, controversial figures who were Southern demagogues, populists, andpolitical bosses. Davis was one of many Southern demagogue politicians who rose to power on a populist message of agrarian frustration with big business and elites. His coarse language, insults, and theatrics were all crafted to enhance his "common man" credentials.[10] Davis made a career of skewering thebusiness interests,newspapers, andurban dwellers to appeal to the poorrural citizens, the majority of the population. He portrayed himself as “just another poor country boy” against the moneyed interests that held back the common man. Davis often used words such as "rednecks" or "hillbillies" but as terms of endearment rather than pejorative, a technique that Huey Long would learn from Davis and later use successfully inLouisiana.[10]
Like many of his contemporaries, Davis used a rhetoric that was stronglyracist andsegregationist. Although Davis did not succeed in implementing many of his racist promises on the stump, he supporteddisfranchisement of blacks, segregation of school taxes, and white supremacy.[11] He attacked 1904 gubernatorial opponentCarroll D. Wood for appointing a black man as a jury commissioner and promised that "no man could be appointed to office under my administration unless he was a white man, a Democrat, and a Jeff Davis man."[12]
It was said that many of his supporters incorrectly believed Davis to be related to Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis, which the politician did nothing to discourage and may have covertly encouraged.[13]
Davis served as prosecuting attorney of the Fifth Judicial District of Arkansas from 1892 to 1896.
Davis was elected asArkansas Attorney General in 1898 and served a single term. He focused on one of the primary issues of theProgressive Era: the creation ofantitrust law to regulatetrusts, meaning large companies or combinations abusingmarket power or tending towardmonopoly.Despite passage of theSherman Antitrust Act of 1890 at the federal level, the law was sufficiently broad to have little immediate impact, and was largely made ineffective by theUnited States Supreme Court caseUnited States v. E. C. Knight Co., leaving state legislatures to address trusts.[14] A new antitrust bill passed by the32nd Arkansas General Assembly, focused on perceivedprice fixing offire insurance rates in the cities of Arkansas, especiallyHot Springs, raised the issue's prominence in Arkansas politics by uniting city dwellers alongside rural Arkansans in anger against the trusts.[15]
Elected in 1900, Davis served as Governor of Arkansas from 1901 to 1907.[16]
In 1905, whenUS PresidentTheodore Roosevelt visited Arkansas, Davis greeted him with a speech that defendedlynching as a means of social control. Roosevelt responded with a calmer speech that defended therule of law.[13]
Davis was elected to the US Senate by the state legislature, as was customary at the time, serving one term from March 4, 1907 until his death. He was chairman of the Committee on the Mississippi and its Tributaries.
Davis served in the Senate until his death in 1913. He is buried at historicMount Holly Cemetery, inLittle Rock, Arkansas.
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